Surrey Militia

From their formal organisation as trained bands in 1558 until their final service as the Special Reserve, the Militia regiments of the county served in home defence in all of Britain's major wars.

The English militia was descended from the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd, the military force raised from the freemen of the shires under command of their Sheriff.

[b] The universal obligation to serve continued under the Norman and Plantagenet kings and was reorganised under the Assizes of Arms of 1181 and 1252, and again by the Statute of Winchester of 1285.

This selected body of men was commanded by two captains, Thomas Hall of Compton and William Creswell of Farnham.

[10][14][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] With the passing of the threat of invasion, the trained bands declined during the following decades until King Charles I attempted to reform them into a national force or 'Perfect Militia' answering to the monarch rather than local officials.

[33][34][35] Control of the trained bands was one of the major points of dispute between Charles I and Parliament that led to the First English Civil War.

[36][37][38] As the crisis deepened, Lord Digby and Sir Thomas Lunsford began raising Royalist volunteers and gathering arms and armour at Kingston.

[10][33][39][40][41] Once the Civil War developed, neither side made much further use of the Trained Bands except as a source of recruits and weapons for their own full-time regiments.

[42][43][44] However, Surrey Trained Bands participated in the Siege of Portsmouth in the summer of 1642 and in November they defended Kingston Bridge while the Battle of Brentford was fought nearby.

[33] [45][46] New Militia Acts in 1648 and 1650 replaced Lords Lieutenant with county commissioners appointed by Parliament or the Council of State.

[10][47] During the Scots' counter-invasion in 1651, the Surrey Militia was moved to Dunstable and then Oxford to join the army, and part of the regiment was present at the Battle of Worcester.

[10][5][54][55][56][57][58][37][59] On 4 September 1666, Charles II called out the Surrey Militia to assist in fighting the Great Fire of London.

In May 1667, under threat of a Dutch invasion, the militia of the maritime counties was ordered to assemble, and on 10 June, with the Dutch fleet in the Thames estuary, the Surrey regiment was ordered to send half its men to Southwark to defend the London area, while the remainder stayed for local defence.

[10][60][61] The militia was called out during the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, and several regiments saw action during the Sedgemoor campaign, but Surrey's was not involved in the fighting.

[10][5][14][53][69][70][71][56][72][73] Arms for the Surrey Militia were authorised on 23 February 1759 when 60 per cent of the quota had been raised, and the regiment was formed at Richmond-upon-Thames on 18 April 1759.

The Surrey regiment was embodied on 26 March 1778,[10][14][75][77][79][80] and that summer was at Coxheath Camp near Maidstone in Kent, which was the army's largest training camp, where the Militia were exercised as part of a division alongside Regular troops while providing a reserve in case of French invasion of South East England.

[10][14][75][77][81] From 1784 to 1792 the militia were assembled for their 28 days' annual training, but to save money only two-thirds of the men were actually called out each year.

[10][84][85] In view of the worsening international situation in late 1792 the militia was called out, even though Revolutionary France did not declare war on Britain until 1 February 1793.

[14][75][77][84] The French Revolutionary Wars saw a new phase for the English militia: they were embodied for a whole generation, and became regiments of full-time professional soldiers (though restricted to service in the British Isles), which the regular army increasingly saw as a prime source of recruits.

Surrey's quota was assessed at 3584, organised into three regiments:[59][88][98][100][101][102][103] Because the numbers of men enrolled in the Volunteer Corps continued to decline, a new Act in 1812 increased the strength of the Local Militia.

Both the 1st and 2nd RSM provided detachments to the 'Provisional Battalions' in a Militia Brigade that embarked on 10–11 March 1814 and joined the Earl of Dalhousie's division that had occupied Bordeaux just as the war was ending.

[14][75][110] At the beginning of the campaign several regular regiments including the Scots Guards were hurriedly brought up to strength with militia volunteers before embarking for Belgium.

Although officers continued to be commissioned into the militia and ballots were still held, the regiments were rarely assembled for training and the permanent staffs of sergeants and drummers were progressively reduced.

Under the Act, Militia units could be embodied by Royal Proclamation for full-time home defence service in three circumstances:[10][114][115][116] The 1st and 2nd RSM were reorganised, with most of the old officers and permanent staff pensioned off and replaced, and annual training was resumed.

[121] Under the 'Localisation of the Forces' scheme introduced by the Cardwell Reforms of 1872, Militia regiments were brigaded with their local regular and Volunteer battalions.

The 2nd RSM was linked with the two battalions of the 2nd (Queen's Royal) Regiment of Foot in Sub-District No 48 (County of Surrey) at Guildford.

[127][128] Although often referred to as brigades, the sub-districts were purely administrative organisations, but in a continuation of the Cardwell Reforms a mobilisation scheme began to appear in the Army List from December 1875.

[121] After the disasters of Black Week at the start of the Second Boer War in December 1899, most of the regular army was sent to South Africa, and many militia units were embodied to replace them for home defence and to garrison certain overseas stations.

In that year the King drew the lots for individual regiments and the resulting list remained in force with minor amendments until the end of the militia.